


Don't Ruin A Perfect Thing

by pansypxrkinson



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood and Violence, Curses, Dark!Harry, Elements of Mind Control and Imperio, Elements of Voodoo, Loneliness, M/M, Mild Gore, Mindfuck, Obsession, Romance, Stream of Consciousness, manipulation and mind games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-04-26 20:01:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14409549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pansypxrkinson/pseuds/pansypxrkinson
Summary: After the battle, everything seemed fine. Until Harry woke up one morning to find his scar a blooded mess upon his forehead, and growing with each day. This is what happens when a horcrux splinters inside of you.This is what happens when you want something so badly that everything becomes simple.





	Don't Ruin A Perfect Thing

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to T, E, and N, and the wonderful mods for being so helpful and understanding. Your help has been invaluable to me !! <3

He turns the thing over in his hand. It's almost cute.

The little head flops forward bonelessly and for a second, he's worried he's broken it.

Harry Potter strokes a long finger down the spine, admiringly. The bumps and ridges are delightfully life like; so much so that they almost feel real.

So much so that they wriggle uncomfortably under his touch as if edging away from him.

It's very authentic. Perfect, from the little silken strands of blond hair to the real leather shoes that he'd stolen and shrunk down to fit onto cotton feet.

He’d poured his all into this. Delicately sewn every strand into the scalp that he'd cut from a unicorn's mane in the forbidden forest.

The place doesn't scare him anymore. Since he died there he came to see it as a rebirth. Harry was never scared these days.

He dotted eyes, a mouth onto it, recreating that perfectly spoilt moue with a paintbrush. Spent days, weeks, however long it really was, Harry can't remember; observing the lines of his face in potions, across the staircases in the entrance hall, and down in the Quidditch changing rooms from underneath his invisibility cloak.

All for this. The opportunity he'd waited for.

He paints lines down one milky cheek. The doll is uncanny and dead eyed.  He had been unable to find just the right shade of grey for the eyes. A storm cloud, too violent; pewter was too dark.

No, Draco Malfoy's eyes were more like the colour of soured milk in the bold heat of the sun, curdled and bubbling with  _something_.

Quite often, Harry had been distracted by his task. He'd keep taking his efforts- the perfectly mixed greys like a smudge of dust on his paint palette- and plunging his fingers into the emerald green; the same green that made a home inside his own eyes, and smudging them together. Mixing their colours until he was left with browny teal sort of blend. It was an ugly shade, but he left it to dry. A smudge against his chin. Some residue trapped under a nail or two.

He'd stuffed his dear old dolly the next day. Watched as it rose into life, so captivating. It was, he imagined, what it must have been like to watch Draco Malfoy himself grow in fast motion; like a sped up film, like a steadily inflating balloon. Growing into his bones, the lines of his shoulders, the square of his jaw, filled out now, at the age of nineteen.

Now Harry knew it was just a case of finishing touches. The embarrassingly blushing cheeks that he always tried to hide, the bluish tinge of veins that lay under his skin like pressed flowers underneath parchment paper. He'd achieved this with a light watercolour. The pinkish tinge at the mouth, in acrylic; when he'd carefully coated his own lips, and pressed them to the doll's. His own greatly oversized mouth, like a mountain stretched over the entire doll's chin, a boat stretched over an expanse of water.

He'd smudged it pink in the process, and tasted the chalky paint with pleasure. Another moment shared between them.

He was so... thin. Dangly, like a marionette puppet. As floppy in real life as the stuffed doll he was holding. He'd tried his best and it was still fucking  _ugly_ in comparison to the original. But that didn't really matter. Wouldn't matter soon. Soon he would have the real thing, and he wouldn't have to settle. He saw an opportunity for power. Pleasure seeking. Everything had been so dull recently...

He'd taken it.

And of course, the spell. It had become largely his life's work now his old life was gone. Now the old boy was gone. His freedom tasted bloody and wet like earth, but it was worth it now. Harry Potter knew who he really was.

He'd created one of his own especially for this. Had wanted it to be special.  _His_ spell from  _his_ own lips. It had never been spoken before by anyone else. It was purely theirs. He knows that there are other ways of achieving this; a simple Imperius was perhaps the easiest.

But nothing tasted quite as sweet. He hated the unforgivables still. Much more for their predictability than anything else now. And their traceability. And if Harry got  _caught?_ How was he going to continue his project?

Maybe there is a part of him now that still hates dark magic. A part of the old Harry, bound and shackled still within him; silenced so no noise can break through.

It is very passive, now. He thinks it would be shivering in disgust.

Maybe it looks how Mad Eye had looked up at him in fourth year. The  _real_ one, as he lay buried under the abyss in the bottom of that trunk. Helpless and fearful. Starving and trapped in revulsion and horror by his body double. But Harry is still Harry. Even if he's different. It's like looking through a fogged mirror, like wriggling into new skin.

A small part of Harry Potter remains the same. An essence of himself, locked away. He spits in its face.

That Harry only caused him pain. Had flickered like smoke. Like a candle extinguishing out of existence steadily in the months after the War.

It had started to depart his body on the train from Hogwarts ever since he'd woken up the day after the battle, alone in Grimmauld Place in searing pain.

He'd looked in the mirror and nearly fainted at the all too familiar scar that had cracked and fizzled like an actual bolt of lightning; over one eye. Oozing great globules of blood that would not dry. Horrible, so horrible.

He had ignored it, as he often did; packed his things, and gone back to school.

For a while, things had been fine. Good even. He'd grown to like sitting alone, and painting in the tree by the lake. He liked looking at things with a critical eye, finding detachment and perspective was helpful for him. It helped the pain to fade. He'd even started to enjoy it, when he found Malfoy sat in his spot one late evening. They'd used to sit together often. Rarely talking, but then neither of them had really wanted to.

A month passed, and then another two, before Harry stopped going back there. He just didn't want to be in company anymore. He had to get away from him. The isolation was addictive. Nothing felt worthwhile anymore, nothing felt exciting. Almost like someone had switched off the light inside of him, and now he realised that his scar had started to grow.

It was like a disease. By the next week it had spread down onto the bridge of Harry's nose, so that it hurt to wear his glasses. It travelled down to his chin, and then to his neck. It met his shoulders; thick jagged lines that ran down him like rivulets of water and... he let it.

He started to care less and less about how he looked, the more persistent they became. He thinks most people around Hogwarts nowadays are scared of him. The scars were taking hold of him as if in possession, but it had felt so right. So nice to give up.

Until one day they stopped growing, the bumpy tissue just reaching the bottom of his spine. By then Harry knew instinctively that it was done. They were finished. It was like he'd lost himself somehow. Like he had walked into a room and forgotten what he was there for. He didn't care though. He still doesn't.

It had never felt so good to lose himself.

Harry was more alive that he'd even been before. But there was a problem. Harry didn't know what the problem was specifically.

He just knew it was Malfoy. He wanted him desperately. In every single way. Being is his company was torturous. It was never enough…

It became an obsession.

Now here he was, a step closer to his goal. He'd spent months on this, wasted countless galleons on this, dreamt in his sleep about this, and now he was going to have it.  _Complete_ control. Well, perhaps it was a little more subtle than that; influenced control. He devised the formula himself after all.

He would be his reason to be. He would influence every word out of Draco Malfoy's mouth. Would play the vocal cords to his desire. The thought is so heady and so brave that Harry can feel himself exploding into existence, drunk on the power, the lust of it all. He's not sure why he's doing this, but he doesn't give a fuck _._ If he wants to fuck with him, then he will. Nothing's going to stop him.

He plunges the wand into Other Draco's temple. It looks like it hurts. Withdrawing the wand and commencing a chant, he moves it downwards to the heart, up to the ears and most importantly, into the seam holding the neck up, then positioned right at the brain stem.

Finally, he places the wand at the would be mouth and hisses,

"  _Animo chordis."_

The doll jerks and twitches slightly. Like something of a life has been breathed into it. The thing seems redder now, and he's filled with a sudden regret because the complexion is a little too warm now, and he'll have to stop sleeping with it now lest he suffocate the actual Malfoy before he can have any fun. Still, it pales in comparison to his euphoria.

He's done it.

He picks up the doll carefully, and presses his lips to its little half-moon cheek. This time he feels a tingle against his own lips, numbing them, and he thinks he can feel a dusting of stubble instead of the starchy material that resided there before.

He smiles into it.

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Perhaps if Draco had any friends, then it might not have happened. Maybe it could have been prevented.

Regardless, the reality was that, when Draco felt himself fall to the cold hard floor of the Slytherin dormitories, paralysed; the press of lips he could sworn he felt against his cheek was the only comfort he received until morning had broken the next day.

 

* * *

 

There's something very wrong with him. He knows it. He can feel it dancing in the fog of his subconscious. Often he gets close to it, this feeling of immense dread, like a hollow inside him, and Draco's sure it's worse that breathing the air of a Dementor. He can feel its chill, he reaches out a finger...

And he's snapped back like an _Expelliarmus_.

There's... there is definitely something new. This feeling like death; like he's mindless and boneless, and wanting to sink into something. Into  _someone._

Draco tried to ignore it. But how can he when he finds himself walking headfirst into doors, tripping over nothing but his own two feet, and scraping his knee on the stone cold floor as he bleeds; trying to not redden when Harry Potter himself kneels down beside him and offers him the hand he never could before. Offers him a smile, all teeth, and feels the firm sensation of ice as he sucks it up, and grips Potter's thinning fingers. Potter’s touch still lingers now, his palm somehow sensitive to the contact.

Draco still feels the chill that goes through him, electric and heavy, like his bones are sewn from the thread of a needle. All tangled up in knots, and breathless.

How can he ignore this? This _feeling_. This compulsion that had awoken inside him ever since he'd collapsed in his own dorm last night. Waited in the blackness for something. To die, or perhaps for help. He's not sure exactly what he wanted, now his feelings don't seem to be his own anymore.

Draco tries to pinpoint the essence of what he'd felt and he thinks it feels like hunger. Some kind of glorious destruction. He wants to listen to it. Wants to revel in it.

It was the same feeling that had pushed him. Had made him nearly shove his fingers into the flames that licked at the walls in the Transfiguration classroom. He'd have done it. He knows he would have. Without the smooth and immediate grip of Harry Potter's hand around his wrist in the seat beside him. He'd smiled at him, fingernails piercing into Draco's skin so harshly that the little half-moon marks still sat around his pulse point. His pulse beating against them, strangely.

Perhaps Potter thought him mad? He wouldn't have been surprised in the slightest. But Draco was inclined to think he found him funny. It was rather like the patronising stare you'd give to a pet. It make his skin crawl, and Draco had shivered as Potter leaned over and whispered quietly,

"Careful."  And had done nothing else, but place Draco's hand gently back on his lap.

He thought they were okay, now; he and Potter. After everything they'd suffered through. Evidently, he'd been wrong.

It's why he's sat now. Alone once again in the silence of his moonlit dorm. Thinking about how last week everything had been fine, if a little lonely.

Now the whole room glows and sparkles dangerously at the edges of his vision and he thinks he's seeing flashes of reds and the slow movements of a paintbrush as it bleeds watercolour down parchment paper. A blur of a mouth, dripping water.

He blinks and it's gone, and he's back to wondering how he got here, and why he hadn't skipped dinner for the first time in months. How he had fallen once again. Had fallen against Harry Potter, on the cold steps, the bruise on his thigh tender, and a blooming blue and purple.

He'd seen Harry's friends then. Weasley and Granger were watching him. Granger looked curious, he could tell from the set of her brow. That was bad enough, but Weasley looked disgustingly sorry for him. That was so much worse, because it inspired him to pity himself, and he just might have cried in front of them all if he hadn't bit his tongue 'til it bleed sheets of iron.

Harry Potter... well it had been hard to tell what exactly he felt. He hoped beyond all belief that it wasn't pity, and somehow he didn't think it was.

 _Harry Potter._ The name is giving him red flags, and he tries to focus in on why. Why is he always there watching? Every time he gets close to an answer, the image shifts and fades, and he gets distracted. Thinking about his plight but not the cause, because he just can't get there. Can't escape the tunnel vision.

Last night his legs had walked him around the castle and back. He begged for sleep but somehow he couldn't release himself.

He'd walked down to the Herbology greenhouses. Stripped petal after petal off of flowers. They looked so wrong, so exposed, like that and Draco felt cruel for mindlessly destroying beauty, but still he couldn't stop. They were exposed in the way Draco himself felt in the moment. Jittery and caught in terror that someone would find him.

Next he'd wandered up towards the library. He’d inked his quill and pressed it deep into the pages of any book that took his fancy. Written harsh words. Vulgarity for its own sake. Poured the ink over his injured hands, where it bit and stung, and pressed them to the pages, leaving handprint whorls like butterflies.

He'd used an inked finger to draw a lightning bolt in the topmost corner of one book, but truth be told he can't even remember why he'd done so.

Afterwards he ran. Pale and shaking and losing his mind. He ran all the way up to the Astronomy tower. His thoughts distinctly his own. Mind clearing underneath the cold blanket of stars. Until he'd felt it once more.

Had seen himself, as if he were not really himself, climb atop the rusted rungs and stand barefoot on the edge of a precipice. On the edge of death. He'd stood there for what felt like hours, muscles frozen until a voice in his head had spoken:

'That's what he saw when he died. When he died because of you.'

Draco was still confused now, as to whether it was his own.

He'd finally walked back then, by five in the morning, and hoped that he was going to bed. He realised soon that he was walking the route to Gryffindor Tower. He wanted it, and he hadn't. The portrait wouldn't let him enter, and he'd knocked for an hour. He'd knocked until his knuckles were raw, crying silent tears, until he'd collapsed from exhaustion in front of it.

He'd been woken the next day by Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley. He's not seen Potter with them for a while now. He'd have been curious, had his body not ached like nothing he could describe. He’d slept on the itchy, carpeted floor all night, and he thinks he sprained something from the fall.

They wanted to take him to Pomfrey, but he'd refused. He couldn't stand the shame of her attention. All the terrible things he did, written all over him. He doesn't need to make any more trouble. Can't make any more trouble. He's lucky they let him back into the school as it is.

Granger had looked like she wanted to say something, but had reconsidered.

Part of him had been disappointed.

The worst of it, however had not come until this morning in Defence. He'd once again chosen to sit next to Potter. He's not even sure why to be honest. All he knows is that he wants to. Or part of him does. There's a voice inside his head. A sharp teasing thing, serpentine and gentle. It had arrived after Draco's fit in his dorm. Had arrived along with the physical compulsions to act in certain ways. When this had all started. Its suggestions seem to make so much sense in the moment. Now he's not so sure.

Nevertheless he sat. And hoped desperately for peace.

Then he'd felt it again. The need. It had gripped Draco so hard he'd nearly fallen apart from the force of it. He'd grabbed Potter's knee, out of reaction or compulsion he's still not sure.

Draco's mind was screaming at him. Berating him. Asking him what in Merlin's name he was doing. Still he couldn't listen. Not even to himself, as his hand travelled up to Potter's throat, fingernails digging into whitened flesh, gripping threateningly but not enough to choke, and pulling him forcefully to face him.

Potter's expression had been a mystery to Draco and all he saw within it was his own terrified face, his pleading eyes in the reflection of Potter's own, like he was nothing more than a mirror.

Potter's knee was digging into Draco's, all hard bone crushed against the bruise on his thigh, like he'd known it was sore. He winced through the pain, but Potter did nothing else. He hadn't moved to punch him, and Draco had been so wishing he had because Weasley and Granger were staring at them, horrified.

Draco had lifted his fingers to grip Potter around the chin, gentler now. He'd felt the sharp line of his jaw, around where Draco's own blunt fingernails pressed against his skin, in some kind of sick parody of the morning before. Through the fear and shame, he almost felt entranced, but he pushed that part of himself away, and buried it, as he always had. He gripped harder, and his fingers burned, curiously. 

Merlin, Potter had lost a lot of weight. He seemed greyer than Draco in the moment. It may have been his imagination but he could have sworn he'd felt red marks lifting underneath his grip from where his nails bit into skin, but he may have confused that with the familiar bumps and ridges of thick scar tissue.

It felt painful where his fingers lay. Where Harry Potter's lightning scar had exploded; and he thinks of last night, how the neat little zigzag he'd drawn in that book was so unlike the mess that remained of Potter. Even he felt intimidated by Potter sometimes, but he also knew Potter too well to let appearances fool. Or at least he thought he had. Potter's scars confused him.

People had begun to stare, then, and Draco knew he was beyond crazy, it was almost liberating to have everyone see it. When McGonagall finally turned and shouted at him to stop at once, Draco found... he could. He placed his hand back down in his lap, and tried not to think too hard about the blisters that now lay at each fingertip. 

Not before he'd spat in Potter's face, though. 

That wasn't even the worst thing. The worst thing was that a small, rejected, chaotic part of him had enjoyed it. In fact, he thinks he may have done it of his own volition.

As he'd released his grip on Potter's face, his justifications had frozen in his throat like someone had cast a  _Silencing Charm_ on him. He'd thought that was it. He'd thought he'd be asked to leave, then.

Until Potter had cut in. He'd apologised to her, had said he'd provoked him. Draco couldn't bring himself to protest through the fog of confusion in his head. Draco had absolutely no idea why. Maybe Potter felt guilty for ditching him. All he knew was, Potter had definitely not started  _anything._

She'd given them both detention.

                                                            

Now he's sat. Waiting. Too scared to fall asleep. Waiting for the sensation.

It doesn't come.

Eventually he falls into a fitful sleep.

In his dreams someone asks him questions:

What's his favourite colour? Why does he always tuck his quill behind his ear when he's concentrating? Why can't he bear to look at himself in the mirror of the Quidditch changing rooms? Why does he eat alone? Does he always grimace like that when he favours his left arm, the memory of _Voldemort_ , all over his arm, like he’ll never be free…

Who was his first kiss? Do his eyes always roll like that when someone strokes his hair back or was Parkinson just special? Does he feel good? Whose shoulder is it that he bites into in his dreams, bloody mouthed and all teeth marks like the broken skin of an apple, and feels his lips trembling against them, the scuff of a bottom lip, a kiss to soothe the violence. Do they have freckles and scars, like Harry Potter?

And who does he think of when he wants to forget the way they've suffered? Who does he think of when he wants to remember?

Better still, what's his greatest fear? Hm.

And now?

Ah.

Good.

Draco doesn't wake until morning. He loses himself to blackness and the violent hiss of words, cruel against the arch of his neck as the sun rises high in the sky once more.

 

* * *

 

"Hey! Watch it, Harry, you'll get juice on my jumper!"

Harry looks up. Hermione's wiping at a stain on her collar. A touch of purple against the crisp white.

"Oh. Sorry, Hermione. I was distracted."

Harry flashes a smile at Hermione to pacify her. She smiles back, but there is something in her expression that searches Harry's own. He lets her do so, setting a mildly curious look upon his own face.

She carries on, satisfied. 

Harry goes back to his pomegranate, peeling back the outer layer with a crunch. It bleeds juice all over his hands. Pithy and a tangle of vessels. He pops a handful of seeds into his mouth with a sigh.

He's thinking about Malfoy once again. Thinking about all the fun he had the night before last. How the spell he created is really quite masterful. Channelling his wants through the doll, like spells through a wand. It was simple, if he thought about it, the only drawback being that he'd had to pace himself, lest he wear Malfoy out completely and ruin the fun.

He'd sat and watched his map all night. Had walked the little dot named Draco Malfoy around the grounds twice, like some strange rendition of Pacman; like the vintage games Dudley so loved to play. He'd never liked them before. Had never seen the appeal of the chase, but now he thinks he's starting to get it.

It was intoxicating.

He'd walked him all the way up to the Astronomy Tower and watched as he teetered on the edge, like an acrobat on a tightrope.

Harry could've let him fall.

Then again, that would've ended his fun prematurely.

So he hadn't.

And maybe Harry doesn't want Draco Malfoy dead. Perhaps that makes him a better person? But maybe he's not so moral? Maybe he's just attached? He never had his own toys before, after all. Had never allowed himself to let go and just possess. He'd hit the halfway mark with his  _chest monster_ in sixth year, but truly that was nothing compared to this.

It felt so good to fall. Fall into what, Harry's not sure...

Still, he knows now that he'd kill anyone who dared to take this from him. He'd kill anyone who dared touch a hair on Malfoy's head. Without hesitation. Well... everyone except Ron and Hermione. He's always been fond of them.

So he hadn't made Draco fall. Instead he'd watched him come apart in slow motion like a firework. Bursting beautiful colours, destructive and fearful. He'd burst like an artery, strings twisted and tight as Harry had meddled and meddled to his heart's content.

He looks up at where he knows Malfoy sits. Exactly seven seats along. Exactly in Harry's line of vision. Exactly as Harry told him to.

He's pale and hunched over his porridge. His pale hair sticking up at odd angles like he's electric. Like he's aching for something and needs the table for support. Like he's terrified of it.

Or maybe he's just tired...

The doll burns against Harry's thigh, white hot pain, like a foaming wave. He places a stained thumb atop his lip and feels the connection that joins them as he closes his own eyes, and breathes them in.

Tonight they have detention together. Tonight, he'll see him in person. Tonight, he'll see just what a glorious mess he's made out of Draco Malfoy.

Harry rushes from his seat before he can betray himself, because the joy is all consuming, it's excitement to the point that he shakes with it. Each step he takes thrumming oddly in ways it never should as he walks briskly out of the hall.

Malfoy. Merlin, Malfoy makes his stomach drop and flutter like little butterflies beating lightly against his skin.

He wants him. He wants him in every single thought, variation, and breath. He knows he should do something about it. Get it out of his system. Indulge it. But there's something that stops the thought dead before it can reach him.

The thought of touch, of holding Draco Malfoy, hurts. Maybe the thing inside of him is scared. Scared of the muscle memory, or lack thereof. The feelings he’d once had… Maybe he’d remember himself.

The concept is so terrible and so awful that he feels suddenly sick. There's something clawing at his insides and the scar, the mass of pain that breathes and stretches over his skin, throbs and shivers terribly. Suddenly he feels so small. He's in his cupboard once again. Yelling into the silence. Suddenly, he doesn't want any of this. Suddenly, everything is wrong.

He wants to die from the shame.

He falls to his knees from the blow.

Fuck.

No. Better to want from afar, he tells himself vaguely. Better to not cheapen this, he asserts; and cannot find any other reason than that, as he remembers himself once more.

He collapses on the floor from sheer exhaustion. His muscles ache and spasm, and he last thing he sees before darkness is the little toy that falls out of his pocket a few inches away, just out of reach.

As his fingertips graze it, they clasp nothing but air.

They succeed only in tainting the doll's feet a deep plum red, from his still stained fingers.

                                                                                                        

* * *

 

When Draco leaves the Great Hall in a frenzy, he can't actually be sure why his feet have taken him here.

The second floor corridors are empty now, and everyone is at breakfast.

Still he's used to this feeling of powerlessness now, and he's terrible at resisting the temptation.

When he finds Harry Potter on the floor of the second floor corridor, he wonders if someone's playing a joke on him. There's blood caked beneath his glasses, the ghastly scar, red, angry, and bleeding, and his own nose stings in a phantom ache.

When he notices a small doll on the floor with eyes like his, lips like his, a frown like his, all furrowed brows and sharp edges, and the same skin, a sickly shade of grey; he thinks it rather looks like him; bar the hair that's far too short. But still he cannot make the connection.

He doesn't understand. But there is a part of him that still screams. He still runs, and leaves Potter to bleed red roses from the stem and thorns that pulse out over his skin.

When he sees Potter at dinner that night, evidently recovered, he thinks the scar at Potter's eye looks smaller than it had before. Despite his cluelessness, he feels relief.

 

Deep down, someone else feels it too.

 

* * *

 Draco clasps his wand in one sweaty hand.

Fuck.

He stares around nervously, and double checks the locking spell he'd placed on the girls’ dormitory. It's going to be fine. _Everything is going to be fine._

He'd been fighting the temptation for two hours now. This awful tugging in his stomach ever since he'd seen Potter at dinner, and felt his eyes pin him to the seat, sharply, when all he'd wanted to do was run.

He knows he needs to hurry now. After all, he has detention. He can't be late.

Before he knows what he's even looking for, he's walking towards Pansy's trunk.

The lid of her watercolour palette pops open with a soft click. He's always loved Pansy's drawings. Maybe not as much as he'd loved Potter's. Now, though, he feels nothing but confusion. He waits for instruction. Waits for clarity. Relief.

_What are you going to make me do this time?_

The paint is cold and wet against his skin. It's the wrong consistency for this; so it barely stains his face at all. It's almost certainly the wrong colour for his skin tone; it's much too dark, with a strange yellow tint. He dips his brush into conjured water. The paintbrush is strange and slimy against his skin like an eel, but it barely shows.

Ineffective.

He snaps Pansy's paintbrush in half, but it's not truly him who does it.

Now his hands plunge into the paints. All boring colours- whites and greys and the occasional purpled veins. He paints himself into a mess. Paints a face onto his own, as if he wasn't enough before. As he were blank and boring, and without knowing why he feels shame and inadequacy.

He paints until he looks as mad on the outside as he feels within. When he closes his eyelids to coat them too, he thinks he feels warmth against his cheek, but it vanishes as soon as he opens them again.

The voice that whispers to him is invasive and humiliating, but he does its bidding, and clumsily lines his mouth in a pinkish red, so that it looks swollen and obscene.

"There. I'm just redecorating. Something wasn't right before. _You've always been so beautiful, Malfoy,_ " he says aloud, but the thought is not his own.

He shakes it away as the wave breaks, and the sensation fades. Now all he wants to do is to hide, and scrub and scrub at himself until he's removed every inch of paint, and cut every string that ties him to whatever is controlling him. But he can't. He needs to leave anyway.

He vanishes the mess and leaves. He knows, somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach that there's no use in fighting this thing that has taken over him. That's left him as hollow as music in a deserted room. He wonders if he's given up yet.

A part of him wonders if there's no compulsion. Or if it's merely his own? He wonders if he's gone insane.

Regardless, as he leaves he's too distraught to notice the slice of thick scar tissue that now sits just underneath one cheekbone. A cut he never made.

It blends in underneath the paint, like a ghost.

                                                                                                                      

Draco Malfoy turns up to his detention looking like a mime. He thinks McGonagall believes he's done it as some sort of joke. She doesn't seem amused, and Draco isn't inclined to laugh either. Potter's there, as he always is. He thinks there's a furrow of confusion at his brow.

Still, he laughs. He always does.

But he says nothing else as they get to work.

 

* * *

 

Harry Potter chops up his lacewing flies vigorously. It's safe to say he's gotten much better at Potions recently. In fact, he seems to have improved in all of his subjects. It's quite handy, really. It gets them all off his back. Not even Hermione can criticise his change in behaviour when she sees how much better his grades have become.

Now though, Harry's feeling that same fuzzy headed feeling that was so familiar to him before. Distraction.

Now, the reason for it is standing in front of him, chopping his own flies and favouring his left leg, like a kicked puppy.

He sees the reflection of his own pearly grin in the sleek black potion before him, and he continues stirring, wondering how best he's going to go about this. To his surprise it is Malfoy who interrupts him.

"It's a little cruel, don't you think?"

Harry's heart skips, "What?"

"This." He points down at the baby blue butterfly he's holding, the next ingredient in the potion.

Harry scoffs, "It's dead, isn't it. Not like it'll be able to do much else now. Might as well be useful for something, no?"

"That's a little callous, even for you, Potter. But yeah...maybe,"

Harry quirks a smile, and cleanly slices the left wing. "Besides, it's not exactly innocent. Look at the markings; it's a parasite."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. You know these butterflies; they enslave ants to look after their young. Appearances can be deceptive,"

"Merlin. Potter, why do you know this?"

"Some of it's in the textbook, and, I used to watch a lot of Muggle documentaries... before," he shakes himself. That was in the past. That was a very different person. That person is gone. Maybe he should have kept his distance. It's less dangerous. There’s something very nostalgic about Malfoy. Suddenly, he's afraid. Afraid to lose this control he has.

Fear makes him perceptive.

"What's... what's that?"

"What? Oh it's... uh, just leave it, Potter. It's only p-"

"No. That."

_Oh._

Harry moves over to Malfoy's desk. He scans his perplexed face, and takes the knife to push back a strand of hair.

He's surprised Malfoy lets him. The doll remains in his pocket.

_Oh!_

"That's the thing with parasites, Malfoy. One day everything's fine and the next... you wake up and you've lost it all. Lost your mind to some zombie ant disease, or you wake up and your body's home to a million other things, all crawling and consuming that spread and spread until... until... it's not just you who's infected."

The thick scar at Malfoy's cheekbone surprises him, and yet part of him thinks this was the plan all along. There's a dash of blood at the seam, and he wets a thumb and rubs it away.

Part of him wonders if this was indeed his own plan after all.

"...until you've lost it all as well." he breathes, and watches the furrow at Malfoy's brow, and the way his eyes travel down to his cheekbone unsuccessfully. He backs up ineffectually, like cornered prey.

"What... what are you talking about?"

But Harry doesn't answer. There's fear in his voice and fear means realisation.

Harry sighs, "Why are you wearing that shit, Malfoy?"

It's the last thing he whispers before he stretches a fist out, and knocks him to the floor.

Malfoy's back hits the edge of the desk as he falls. The sound rings in his ears and Harry crouches down beside him.

He knows he's said too much. He better fix that.

Harry's not sure where his excitement has gone now. Now he feels nothing at all.

 

He's not sure if it's better or worse.

 

* * *

 

Several months pass before Draco sees Potter again. It feels rather like he's vanished off the face of the earth.

A shock of messy hair in a crowd, a face in the shadows, and air that shimmers and twists like it holds something more behind it.

That's all he's seen of Harry Potter in three weeks.

Yet Draco sees him in his dreams every night. The rough drag of a mouth against his neck, sharp and cold and he flinches at it, eyes still closed and fluttering; wondering if he's pulling away or fighting to get closer.

That much has always been true though, he supposes. He's always been fucking haunted by Potter, if he's honest.

When he closes his eyes he still sees his boyish smile and the way they used to sit together and share company, silently, when nothing else felt real. Their legs dangling from the small oak, and the way Potter used to sketch the lake below, and fill it with colours that Draco never saw.

They had barely spoken, but it had meant more to him than he could have described. A few short weeks of happiness.

Perhaps he'd done something wrong in the weeks that followed. Or perhaps Potter had just changed. Or aged. Because that's how it had crept up on him. So softly that Draco had barely noticed, until Potter had stopped sketching in the oak by the river. Until he'd seen the way Potter's scars had grown over him like vines. Until he'd had to remember how Potter used to look at him like an equal, and not an opportunity.

Draco had kept his distance then, because he'd known Potter didn't want to see him anymore. Maybe he'd been a little scared too. Maybe he'd been terrified.

They'd certainly never been close, but he'd always thought he could read Potter well. After that he couldn't look him in the eye.

Now he feels things he can't understand. He can barely think at all. Thinking about Harry Potter is like plunging his hands into hot wax; painful, and he's lost in him. The image flickers then fades from his mind, and Potter vanishes again. He wakes.

Fuck.

Draco blinks away the sleep from his eyes. His chest heaving and something thick like fear in his throat, a touch of arousal in the sweat that beads his skin, salty at his upper lip. He swipes it away, shamefully.

Merlin. He needs some water.

His vision still sways in rays of bright light at the edges of it. For a second he thinks it's the sun, but it's still pitch black outside. This time he doesn't see Potter at the edges of it.

He ignores it, and creeps out into the common room to pour a drink.

Madam Pomfrey had said he needed to be careful ever since that night. Ever since he'd fainted in detention. He feels the scar at his cheek.

Fuck. He must have caught it badly.

He supposes he should thank Potter for taking him to the hospital wing. Then again, he took him to Pomfrey. He's on thin ice as it is. Potter probably wanted it to happen, he probably wanted him expelled.

Draco thinks back to Potter's smiling face. The one he's dreamt of every night. All soft smiles and kindness. Back when things were easy. Back when he wasn't strange and cold.

Somehow it doesn't provide the same comfort tonight.

He wants to punch the grin off him.

 

The next time Draco sees Potter, it happens again.

He'd woken slowly to the same pulling in his stomach, but strangely the same sick feeling of dread had not followed. Instead, it felt rather like rushing water, like a gushing vein, like when Father used to carry him to his room, drowsy, when he'd fallen asleep in the armchair. It felt like giving up.

His eyes were open, he knew they were, but all he could see were colours that lacked any shape or form.

He's not sure why the thing wanted him to cut his hair, but ultimately he didn't question it. It felt too good to give in now. He could barely see in the blackness of the dorm. Only the moonlight shone down as his hands moved of their own accord, as he stripped away the years. Until it was done.

Draco caught his reflection in the common room mirror as he snuck out into the castle.

If he squinted, he thought he looked just like he did before the War, and for a second he wanted to stop.

Just for a second, before he opened the door and disappeared. It fell shut with a soft click.

 

He knows he's going to the Potions office as soon as he reaches the staircase. The stone is cold underneath his bare feet, and he thinks idly that he should be scared of someone catching him out here.

He should be, but the fear feels dull and far away. The hair at his neck feels strange now, and the cold air is alien against his skin as the staircase creaks into motion.

There's a prickly feeling that gives him goosebumps. He closes his eyes and sees flashes of green. He notices that he's still holding the scissors and a part of him is reassured and a part of him is not. Tonight feels like infinity; he feels invincible.

Where he reaches the Potions classroom, he's not sure exactly the route he took to get there. Everything's becoming so muddled and rational thought deserted him long ago.

So he chooses action instead.

Before he knows it, there's parchment everywhere. Books strewn all over the floor, their leather spines cut, and covered in something red that looks a lot like blood, until he realises it's just ink, spilt and pooling under his feet.

He must have done that.

 

He walks red footprints into the supply closet.

There's silence for a few seconds.

Until he smashes everything in sight. Jars and specimens topple to the ground. Draco can feel the glass that crunches underneath his feet, and his own knuckles now bloodied with little dashes where his fingers must have hit glass.

He sees the dead butterfly that stands out a brilliant blue against the red that taints everything he sees, now. The glass has cracked, but it's lying there just as dead as it was before when it sat on his desk. Still a parasite, still as beautiful; and suddenly he feels distraught. Suddenly he's helpless and cold.

Somehow the scar at his cheek has split open now, and it seems larger than before. It oozes over one pale eyebrow in ribbons of red, a dash in his line of vision, even though it shouldn't have bled like that.

He wants to fall to the floor and cry. He wants this to end, but still he walks away, trailing red footprints behind him.

He hopes it's still ink, because he's too numb to feel anything now.

 

He finally reaches Potter in an empty Charms classroom.

He thinks he should be surprised, but he isn't.

He must look a state, and for a second he's afraid of alarming Potter. He thinks he looks like a ghost. An echo of how he'd looked in sixth year. Pale, bloody and shaking, with the same unkempt hairstyle.

Then he realises it. He realises it as soon as he sees Potter's face. The way he's standing, framed in a corner, staring at Draco like he's a particularly captivating piece of art.

It's how he used to look at his paintings; critically, but also like he couldn't tear his eyes away. Possessively. Like he owns him. Draco used to envy that. He used to want that degree of attention. Now he feels the brightness leave his eyes. The compulsion fades.

He's not sure if this is giving up or fighting back.

 "You did this to me, didn't you." It's not a question.

Potter just stares. He chucks something over to him, and Draco tries not to flinch.

He looks down at the doll. It makes his skin crawl as he touches it.

"I've seen this before. You... were holding it when-"

"I made it." he interrupts, like he's been dying to speak for years, like he's sick with pride. "Seem familiar, Malfoy?"

"It looks like me."

"Got it in one." And suddenly he’s allowed to comprehend what he never could before.

"Why…why would you…"

"You know, Malfoy, if I knew I'd tell you. You're just so... Merlin. Nothing makes me feel like you do. It's like I'm burning. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to. I think you're starting to understand though. This feeling, I know you feel it too. We're connected. We’re so close now. Can’t you feel this," He approaches slowly, and takes Draco’s limp hand in his. He wants to run, but Potter won’t let him. His grip is strong, yet somehow weak at the same time, and it’s all wrong. Merlin it _burns_ like hell.

“Fuck!” Potter drops his grip and stares at his hand strangely, like it’s betrayed him, “I wish I could…” He reaches out. His fingers bump Draco’s chest, and then he thinks better of it, and lowers them.

"I...I-" Draco feels his throat close on the words. He's not sure if it's of his own volition.

Potter sighs, "-Watch,"

And suddenly he's back on the roof of the Astronomy Tower; he's painting book after book in rivulets of black ink, a finger traces a scar that runs a river down Potter's face. Now he's painting lines onto his own face, and he can see the small doll that breathes in life, he can feel it, and the caricature he's become, and his heart catches in his throat, because the doll was never _for_ him. It was never to control him, or made to fit him, or force him. He was made to become  _it._

He looks down at the thing in his hand and he feels faint at the same abnormal face it wears, the egg white glow; the feet that stain red at the soles, glistening with shards of glass, and the short hair that never looked like his did until he cut it to fit the design.

Draco Malfoy sees the mouth, his mouth, that stretches too widely, and the veins that stitch their way across him, but they're not veins not really, no, they're scars and he's become the same. He's become just the same.

"You, you-"

But the words don't come, because honestly he's never been good with them. He's still dumbstruck with horror and confusion and betrayal, half fooled that he'll wake up and nothing will be as horrible as the sheer abhorrence he's feeling now, because  _Potter_ wouldn't... because he'd never trusted anyone, never anyone but Potter, who was always so stupidly good. Who was always everything he wanted, and his whole world has shattered and now the numbness has faded, now the pain has set in, and he thinks he'll be sick with the weight of it all, and he charges at him, because words have never worked out for him, and all they've earned him is pain; but action? Action is glorious.

As is the crack that Potter's head makes against the floor.

"Merlin. Finally. Just fucking do it,"

Potter's looking at him with some sick form of enjoyment. Smiling in between the blood that spills from a split lip.  He's grinning so hard, and it's so reminiscent of how he'd looked when he'd fallen into him, the morning after this had all started, but Draco knows better now.

His knee burns into Potter’s side. Every single part of him that touches Potter’s skin crawls, like ants scurrying away from a threat. He can taste the fear that bubbles up in Potter’s chest.

He can sense that something’s wrong. There’s… _something_ in his eyes. It's nothing like those soft smiles and quiet words they use to exchange before, but it’s nothing like the sick pleasure either…

It wants him to punch and run. The _something_ inside him begs and pleads for him to make his escape. To keep a good distance, because each moment of closeness is agony. The mass of pain throbs with each second that passes, it throbs for what they used to be.

The nostalgia makes him angrier than he's ever been in his life. The pain of being discarded is still so raw. It's white hot, like clasping a poker barehanded and he just can't stop punching every piece of skin he can reach, even as he sees his arms and the weedy scars that wind themselves down him now. There’s something conflicted within him. The thing, that likes the violence, loves the thrill and the way it eats up his humanity; all-consuming and spreading… but it’s a dangerous game. Too great a risk.

No, better to make his escape now, because it knows him better than he knows himself. The curse that has wound itself down into his lungs and circled around his heart, knows Draco Malfoy, and every pulse of affection that he held for Harry Potter. It knows the rawness of the betrayal, and it knows what he’s going to do, and that cannot happen.  

He has to stop. He must.

But he doesn’t.

Not even when he notices that Potter's whispering to himself even now, words that sound encouraging. The way he's limp underneath him, and how he does not even try to throw him off. Even then, he does not stop.

The pain builds and builds until he can feel his own punches across his own body, instead of Potter’s. A black eye that blooms there now, born from nothing, and he carries on, because he hates himself just as much as Potter now, and because it’s getting hard to distinguish between the both of them, the paint blurred, their colours mixed.

And then… he stops. He stops when he hears the ghost of something he'd always wanted to hear. It's like a bomb's gone off in his brain, but the context is so fucking wrong and he hates himself. Merlin, he hates them both when he hears Potter whisper,

"Fuck, I love you,"

But he stops.

He stops and he crashes his mouth against Harry Potter's.

For a second the world narrows down to the feeling of Potter's soft mouth against his.

The mind-numbing feeling disappears, and with it the brunt of his anger goes too.

It feels like a memory. Like the guilty pleasure of hiding in the past. They can't do this. Can't he see the reality of the situation? This is all wrong.

But just for a moment. For a moment it feels like none of this had ever happened. He's too broken, too devoted, to deny himself that.

That's the reason he steadies himself; eyes still shut, because he cannot be reminded of reality. That's why he, gentler now, opens his mouth underneath Potter's, and brings his hands up to cup Potter's jaw. 

His fingers rest there, uncertain, confused, in awe. The horror he feels is muted, and suddenly Potter doesn't hurt to touch anymore.

Potter's eyes are closed too, like he cannot stand the actuality of this either, but he's still kissing him, and Draco can't deny there's comfort, there's softness, in the way Potter's hand finds his and laces his fingers against Draco's.

There's silence for a while, as they lay there.

It's Potter who breaks away,

"I... I don't know what I want, please stop..."

Draco does.

He wonders now if Potter will hurt him, or even kill him. He thinks he should care more, but he's so overwhelmed that he just can't think rationally, his eyes still shut tight, for seeing makes it real, speaking makes it true.

He feels moisture against his lips. He knows Potter's a breath away from giving in. He can feel him waging a war within himself, fighting against this. Against _them_ , and all that they could've been.

The soft sigh that escapes Potter, like it had been lying in wait forever, is the last thing he hears as Potter kisses him. He does it entirely of his own volition.

It feels like a cut thread. Suddenly, something's gushing blood. He thinks it might be his nose.

The thing within him dies.

Maybe it's taken him with it.

 

The world goes white.

 

* * *

 

"What?-"

It's like swimming to the top of an ocean. He can see the light at the surface of the water, but it feels so far away, and somehow he's falling into something.

Harry shoots upwards like someone's shocked him to life.

There's a weight on top of him, and he fights to free himself from it, eyes still shut tight like he's afraid to open them.

_What the hell?_

He collapses back down in defeat.

Fuck, it's like he's boneless. Shit.

He wonders if he's having another nightmare, but it feels too real for that. His lips feel raw and painful. His head feels like it's going to fall off and his hand is held tight in something...is...his hand in...someone's hair?

 

When he finally summons the energy to blink his eyes open he screams.


End file.
